Chapter 26 – Discussions and Detection
The ER department had been busier than normal, even for a Monday, and Jesse, who had started work just after seven, hadn't had time to draw breath until lunch time. He knew that Alex was working somewhere close by, Mark too, but he hadn't seen them. His first patient had been wheeled into trauma three at 7.10 and he hadn't actually taken two steps outside the room since. Now though, everything seemed quiet and, looking carefully out of the door, as if expecting patients to start raining down on him, Jesse made his way towards the doctors' lounge and the coffee machine.
"Doctor Travis, your wife called about an hour ago." The voice of one of the young nurses on duty stopped Jesse in his tracks and he turned and moved towards her.
"Did she say what it was about?" Jesse was aware of his heart beating faster, of the feeling of clamminess on his palms, but he could also feel the beginnings of other feelings, he missed her, he wondered why she had contacted him and, for the first time in a long while, he wanted to hear the sound of her voice.
"She said to tell you that Anneya had an appointment with Doctor Knoll at ten and could you please meet her at his office?" The nurse read the message carefully from the piece of paper it had been noted down on.
"Why didn't someone come and get me?" Jesse looked at the young woman in front of him as he tried to remember what it was that Doctor Knoll actually did.
"You were in with your cardiac arrest patient, Doctor, and then you had three from the RTA, we just didn't have a chance. I'm sorry."
"No, you're right, it was kind of hectic. I'll go right on over … um, where is Doctor Knoll, exactly?"
"In Audiology, Doctor." The nurse's words caused Jesse's heart to fall, but he just nodded his head and made his way towards the elevator. Once he was inside and out of sight of everyone he leant against the back wall and closed his eyes. He tried to tell himself that Anneya was just having routine tests, that any child would have to have them after a head injury, but it didn't work and he wasn't able to lift his spirits at all. The jolting of the lift and the sound of air being released as the doors opened told Jesse that he was at his desired destination, so he pulled himself together and walked out into the hallway.
Jesse recognised the nurse outside the offices of Doctor Knoll as Shannon and he smiled at her. "Jesse, Rae's inside, Anneya's being tested, but you can go in, I'm sure they won't mind." She smiled back at one of her boyfriend's best friends and was delighted for Rae that he had arrived. Then she watched silently as he took a deep breath, opened the door and went inside.
ooo
Steve sat in Newman's office and looked at the desk in front of him. For a start it was set out for a right-handed person, and so he'd had to switch everything around. He hadn't worked out why everything had seemed wrong on the Saturday but on the Monday morning it had been instantly obvious and now he had moved it all so that he could put his hand on the different things he would need. The only problem was he couldn't actually remember where they had been before he moved them, which was a worry, but not one he would have to deal with until Friday or Saturday when he would also have to take the picture of Jo and Daniel off the desk and replace the one of Mrs Newman, which was currently lying face down in the bottom drawer.
He had often grumbled about the amount of mail he received, but it was nothing compared to what the Captain got. There was a pile of letters in the in-box which looked as if it was about to burst out of the elastic band holding it all together. In the middle of the desk was a list of the things that he hoped to get done during the day, but as he had spent most of the morning on the phone he was now having serious doubts about his ability to even work his way through half of it.
The top item was to speak to Rae about the pictures they'd received earlier the previous week. While Anneya had been in the hospital he'd decided that it would be better not to tell her that they had been under scrutiny the entire time that they were in the club. He'd hoped to get it out of the way first thing that morning, but there had been a message on his desk informing him that she was taking Anneya back to the hospital and would be in as soon as she could after one in the afternoon. It was now twelve-thirty and he was counting on her arriving in the next hour.
The squad room was half empty; Cheryl was out on a call following up a murder that happened three weeks earlier and had stalled ever since. Now though, she felt that she had a lead and Steve didn't expect to see her again for a little while yet. Ben Chapman and Sam Yip were both testifying in court and so they weren't planning on coming in to the station at all. The other detectives in the department were working quietly, but somehow the friendly air that the room usually produced seemed to be missing, and Steve knew that it had a lot to do with not only who wasn't there, but the fact that he wasn't where he felt most at home, and he needed to accept that, for the next seven days, his place was elsewhere.
ooo
By one in the afternoon the conference centre was buzzing. Each work station had one model and one hairdresser working at it, and the judges, including Ms Sloat, were continually walking up and down the rows, speaking to different contestants each time, and making copious notes.
Dominic had been spoken to just after he had finished washing his model's hair. The male judge who had stopped had been fidgety and nervous, repeating his questions, and taking down the answers in a bird-like scrawl. About thirty minutes or so later, when he was blow-drying the longest sections of hair into a neat and tidy bob, he got his second visit from the judges. He had turned the hair dryer off and waited patiently while Ms Sloat asked the model how she was being treated, whether her stylist was considerate and competent. Once she had answered in the affirmative Dominic had been smiled at and he had begun drying once again.
Dominic's model was called Jenny, she was, she told him, twenty-three years old, and wanted to work in retail. Her hair was a beautiful shade of red, naturally so, and came halfway down her back. It was thick, shiny, completely straight and Dominic was delighted with it. The competition was slightly different on each day, and he knew that if he progressed into the next round tomorrow his model would have curly hair. Today though he was standing before a blank canvas and as he dried the last section of hair he began to see his finished design in his head.
ooo
Jesse stood just inside Doctor Knoll's office and watched the scene in front of him. Rae had her back to the door, her hand was holding that of their daughter and she was staring intently at Anneya as she slept. Doctor Knoll was at his desk, a tablet of lined paper in front of him and he was filling it with notes. After a minute or two Jesse cleared his throat and tapped lightly on the doorframe.
"Yes, may I help you, Doctor?" Julian Knoll stood up and Jesse felt very small.
"Yeah, um, hi, that's my daughter on the bed." Jesse could hear the confusion in his voice and he waited for Rae to step in and save him.
"Mrs Travis?" Julian had realised who the child was, had known that her father worked in the hospital and had split from his wife. The Community General gossip-mill churned out tales, true and false, at a steady rate and although he didn't like to think of himself as a participant he was always interested to hear what was happening around the hospital.
Rae had stood up when she realised who had come in, she carefully laid her daughter's hand back on the bed and then moved to one side. "Would you like to sit with her for a while? I can wait outside."
"No, no, we can do this together." Jesse wasn't sure if he could do as he had said, but he knew that he had to try, there had to be a point where he grabbed his fear, pushed it to one side and tried to live with it instead of shutting it out. There was nothing threatening in this room not to him at any rate, so maybe, just maybe, now was the time to start trying. The smile on his wife's face told him that he had made the right decision.
ooo
The picnic lunches had disappeared extremely quickly. Mrs Milner had been amazed at the different types of food that had been carried in the backpacks of her pupils. The ordinary fare of sandwiches, chips, fresh fruit or a cupcake and drink seemed to have been replaced in many cases by all sorts of fancy things. She had seen burritos, which she knew must be cold, packs of cheese with small savoury crackers, one child had little pizza bases which he put meat and cheese on before popping the whole lot in his mouth in one go. There had been chocolate rolls, even though the letter home had said specifically no chocolate, candy or soda, and her experienced eye and brain had taken a note of the children to concentrate on during the bus ride home and she hoped she would remember to ask the driver to open a few of the roof windows before they set off.
Once everything had been eaten all the rubbish was properly disposed of in the various trash receptacles placed around the picnic area and for a while a quiet calm descended over the twenty-three children. One or two of the smaller ones had fallen asleep, and even Jayden and his friend Emmanuel were sitting quietly together, their Gameboys linked with a cable as they challenged each other to one of the more popular games.
Mrs Milner moved carefully around her little group, enjoying the peace, and the different type of company they provided her with in an outdoor environment. She bent down and picked up one of the silver pouches that had contained orange drink and smiled; she had seen it fall from the hand of Millie Jones as she struggled to get all her rubbish in the bin and, knowing that the child was likely to burst into tears if she thought she had unintentionally dropped litter, she'd said nothing.
Twenty minutes later, as if on cue, the children began to get noisy and active again, and Ella Milner got her lesson plan out of her bag and cleared her throat. "Right, children, we have done marvellously so far, but unfortunately this is our last activity." She paused as the disappointed cries of the class went up, after a moment she held up her hand and silence returned. "What I want you to do is make your way down the trail and then one of you will remain on the path and the other will go into the trees. You will look around you and then swap places. Don't all choose the same place to stop; there is plenty of forest for everyone. Now, when I say into the trees I don't mean a three mile hike!" she looked purposefully at Jayden and Emmanuel as she spoke, and both boys just grinned back at her. "Once you have each looked at the area you will confer, write down all the things you have seen and then join me ready to make your way back to the bus. Now, does any one have any questions?"
"Please, Miss Milner, can we go to the bathroom first?" The cry came from Emma Bright, a tiny little blonde haired child, one of the youngest and smallest in the class, and probably the only one willing to call out such a question. Once she had done so though the floodgates were open, Mrs Milner shuddered as she realised how she had phrased her thoughts, and soon there was a queue outside both restrooms as each child made him or herself comfortable for the afternoon's activities.
ooo
Rae made her way into the squad room and plonked herself down in the chair behind her desk and realised immediately that it had been swapped while she was away. Her chair had been replaced a little while ago, and was obviously the most comfortable one in the department. She cast her eyes around the room and found it almost immediately, behind Steve's desk, she wheeled the slightly rickety one back to its normal place, retrieved her own chair and then sat and let her mind wander for a few minutes before remembering that Steve would be in Newman's office.
Steve looked up from his paperwork as he heard a knock on the door and smiled with relief as he saw Rae standing waiting to enter. "Come in, Rae." He stood as she did just that and indicated one of the chairs in front of the desk for her to sit in.
"Hi, Steve, I'm sorry I'm late, but the tests took longer than I thought." Rae swallowed the lump that she could feel in her throat and looked at her partner, determined not to let the emotion she was feeling envelope her.
"Don't worry, I know you wouldn't stay away if it wasn't necessary, but what tests did Anneya have to have done?" Steve could see that Rae was struggling with herself, that she was just about keeping her feelings under control.
"She had to have an ABR test, an Auditory Brainstem Response test." Rae paused for a moment before continuing. "She's Deaf, Steve, Anneya is almost totally Deaf." Rae looked down; the pity she knew she would see in her friend's eyes would be too much.
"Oh, God, Rae, I am so sorry, I … I don't know what to say." Steve looked away, he could hear the emotion in his voice, and just as Rae had done he fought for control. As he sat, trying desperately to think of something reassuring to say, and coming up with nothing, things he had been concerned about came back to him. Steve remembered how, when Rae had come to pick up Eliana after Anneya came home, the little girl had totally ignored him, hadn't turned to him as he spoke, and had literally jumped out of her skin when her sister touched her. Now he understood, she had done both those things because she'd had no idea that either of them were anywhere near her.
"Steve?" Rae had watched her partner and seen not pity as she had expected but something else. She saw him wrestle his emotions back under control and then she saw understanding in his features, he was sad, she had no doubt about that, but she realised that he had seen signs of it, as she had, but he too had misread them.
"Rae, I'm sorry, look, do you want to go home? Who has her, is she with Sally?" Steve stood up and moved over to Rae, taking her into his arms to hug her, needing the reassurance from her as much as he knew she needed it from him.
"No, no, I don't. She's with Jesse." Rae pulled back from the welcome embrace, but kept a hand on Steve's arm. "He came in about halfway through the test, and he stayed, he stayed until the end, and then he took her home with him. Whatever his problems, he is her daddy, it's where she should be."
"Well then, we have other things to talk about and deal with, but if anything changes, just let me know and go home, ok?" Steve could see that Rae was tired, he wasn't surprised, but he needed her, they had a horrendous caseload right now, and his being out of action behind a desk was not helping it any.
Rae nodded, ran her fingers through her hair and then began to listen to what Steve had to say.
ooo
The judges had been past Dominic's workstation so many times he had lost count. He knew that he had been so deep in concentration that they could have sat and eaten their lunch right next to him and he wouldn't have noticed, but he did know that they had been over to him many more times than the guy next door. Finally, just after four o'clock a gong sounded and all the contestants put down whatever it was they were using on their model's hair, removed the cape from around the girl's shoulders and swung the chair round so that it faced out into the auditorium.
The next forty-five minutes were spent in almost total silence as the judges made their way up and down the aisles for the last time. Dominic knew that they had probably already made their decisions but were just double-checking. There were four judges and gradually they all met together on the stage at one end of the hall.
"Ladies an' Gentlemen, the quality of work that we have seen this afternoon has been exceptional. We have had an extremely hard time decidin' who will go through to the second round tomorrow, an' would encourage all of you not lucky enough to make it to enter again next year." The head of judges was a middle-aged man, around five ten in height who spoke with a deep Texas accent. "We will call your number out only if you are progressin' to the next stage, an' they will be in numerical order. If you are called please pick up your entry card for tomorrow on the way out, no one will be allowed in here without one."
Ten minutes later Dominic had packed up his personal belongings, including the card for the next day and headed back towards his hotel room. He had a date that evening, and he wanted to sleep for an hour or two before he got ready, and tomorrow he would be busy again.
ooo
Cheryl had a feeling that Steve wasn't going to be very impressed with what she had to report, and she hoped that he was in a good mood. She doubted it, because he wasn't a great lover of desk duty, although she had a feeling that would change when the baby she had heard about the previous week arrived. As she walked into the squad room Cheryl heard raised voices, and wished that she was still on the road.
"And you didn't think to tell me? And don't give me that about Anneya again, Steve, do you have any idea how this makes me feel? To have someone take pictures of me, someone I don't know and then they send it here, where I work? Just … just like before." Rae's voice had been loud and insistent, but as she finished her sentence it trailed away, to be replaced by Steve, who Cheryl could tell was trying to appease his partner but was still easy to hear.
"Rae, that is exactly why I didn't tell you. After what Phillip Levington did to you and Jesse, there was no way I was gonna let you know about this while Anneya was so badly hurt and Jesse so … vulnerable. You were far safer not knowing, and you were in the hospital where … I … I just thought I was doing the right thing." Steve stopped talking; now that they were together he wondered whether he had made the wrong call, but at the time he had been certain that not telling Rae was the right way to go.
"Steve, I have to tell you that I disagree totally with what you said, if I had been looking after Anneya at the hospital when Levington was around he would have found out no problem and come and shot up the place, or taken my child or something, just like Willis did. This guy, who kills people, Steve, sends in a picture and you think it's safer that I don't know? Words fail me!"
"Yeah, I wish they would." Steve realised with horror that he had spoken aloud as he saw Rae's face.
"What did you say?" Rae stared at him, she couldn't believe what she had just heard and was about to launch at him again when she felt herself begin to smile and then she laughed out loud. "There are days, Sloan, when you seriously push your luck."
Steve, not sure why Rae had suddenly found his gaff funny, smiled too. He knew he had been let off the hook and he had no intention of irritating her any more, not for the foreseeable future. As the tension in the room receded there was a knock at the door and both Rae and Steve looked around to see Cheryl standing there, a slightly bemused look on her face.
"Hi, Cheryl, come on in." Steve stood up as his old friend came into the room and once again indicated for her to sit down.
"Hi, Rae, Steve, I guess it's safe to come in without the aid of a tin hat and a safety net then?"
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that, there is still the matter of my chair, Lieutenant-acting-Captain Sloan!" Rae tried to get her angry voice back, but the relief at having a light hearted conversation with someone was so total that she failed miserably.
The banter carried on a little longer, and then they began to get back to business. Rae would be working with Cheryl for the week while Steve was otherwise engaged and so the three of them went over various cases and brought each other up to date on things. Once everything that both Steve and Rae had wanted discussed had been covered Cheryl began to speak.
"I uh, I went past our guy Matthew Little's address on the way back from my witness interview." Cheryl had told Rae about the details she had found out that afternoon and so she carried on talking. "There's a problem."
"Why did I just know you were gonna say that?" Steve shook his head; he had to admit he hadn't given the man a second thought since he had left the squad room the day the pictures arrived. "So, what is the problem?"
"You mean apart from the fact that the address doesn't exist?" Cheryl grimaced as she finished imparting her bad news.
"What? How can it not exist? He was reporting a crime, not trying to cover his tracks." Steve's voice had risen as he spoke, but he lowered it as he noticed two or three heads raise in the room beyond his office. "How can it not exist?"
"Steve, there is no road called Meridian Way in Los Angeles. There is a Meridian Terrace and a Meridian Street they are both a little ways off the Pasadena Freeway, but no Meridian Way. I checked and double checked." Cheryl shook her head, knowing that she hadn't finished yet.
"I have no idea who Matthew Little is, but didn't he leave a home number or a cell number?" Rae looked at Cheryl as she spoke, and saw her shake her head.
"Nope, the phone number is a phoney, well, it's not, it exists, it's a pizza place in Pasadena. He had the area right, and the cell phone number he gave me belonged to an elderly lady who was so worried when I called her that I had to go and see her to make sure I hadn't given her a fatal coronary!"
"And had you?" Rae smiled as she asked the question.
"No, but I should think it was a pretty close run thing. She keeps her phone in a plastic bag in the bottom of her purse. She only had it switched on because she needed to call her sister and so she had gotten her daughter to get it all ready for her before she left home. It was so old I'm surprised she could lift it, I hadn't realised how small these things have got…" Cheryl saw the look on Steve's face and decided it was time to wrap things up. She had a feeling that the fruit cake she had in her car should remain her little secret. "Anyhow, I don't think she has anything to do with the missing suitcases."
"Thank you, Detective." Steve was annoyed at what had happened, and the fact that Cheryl had spent precious time chasing something that didn't exist. "It still doesn't explain why someone would come into the station and pretend that he had his suitcases stolen. I guess we just file him away and get back to more pressing matters."
"Funny little guy, I don't think I would know him again if he walked in right now, but at least he was happy to leave when you had your hissy fit about those photos."
Rae felt herself go very cold. "He was here when you got the pictures through the post?"
Steve nodded his head. He had been furious when he had found the picture of himself and Rae, talking together at Red's Nightclub, in his mail. When another identical one had been in her pile of letters too he had felt very uneasy. Now as Rae spoke he felt that feeling coming back again.
"Right here, in the squad room, when you did what?"
"I … what did I do?" For a minute Steve thought back. He had been joking around with Cheryl, Alison had come up with the mail, and that strange little man had followed her up. Cheryl, who hadn't wanted to be at work and had nothing to do, had rescued the desk sergeant by dealing with him and he had gone back to his own desk. "I opened my mail and when I got to that one I yelled out and you … you came over and then he left." Steve looked at Cheryl for confirmation of what he had just said.
"Yeah, that's right, I'd finished taking the details anyway and so I got rid of Mr Little, we got the picture dusted, showed the Captain, and then, well then I guess we just got on with our day."
"It was him." Rae stopped talking, she just sat, totally sure of what she had said.
"What do you mean it was him?" Steve knew exactly what she meant, but he really hoped that he was wrong.
"The guy who Cheryl interviewed, the guy who came up into our squad room and watched you open your mail. It was him, our Red Rose Killer."